This invention relates to a splicer which uses air to intertwine, twist or entangle yarn ends together to form a continuous strand of yarn, and more particularly to a hand-held splicer having a splicing chamber which may accommodate and splice yarns of varying sizes and twists.
In order to join one yarn end to another so that a continuous length of yarn may be fed to various textile machines, such as a tufting machine that uses the yarn to form pile in a backing material in a carpet manufacturing process, the art has developed various yarn splicers. Air entanglement yarn splicers are known in the art wherein a pair of yarn ends are inserted into a chamber into which air under pressure is directed radially or tangentially to separate the end of each yarn into the various fibers and entangle the yarn ends together. All yarn, both those formed from natural fibers and those formed from man-made fibers, are formed from a multiplicity of strands of filament which are arranged in various forms by spinning, cabling or twisting. However, those that are highly twisted heat set yarns are difficult to splice since the yarn strands cannot be broken up or separated into a plurality of fibers, i.e., untangled, readily to permit entangling of the strands by the splicer. In the known prior art pneumatic yarn splicers, air alone has been inadequate to untangle quickly tightly twisted and heat set twisted yarns.
Examples of prior art air twisters are disclosed in Moreland U.S. Pat. No. 5,357,740 which discloses a hand-held splicer of the type under consideration. The Czelusniak, et al., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,825,630 and 4,833,872 discussed in Moreland and the Crouch, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,788,814 also discussed therein, disclose similar splicers. Other splicers of this general type includes Matsui, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,538,407, and Irwin U.S. Pat. No. 3,572,025. Other patents disclosing similar splicers are Lucchetta U.S. Pat. No. 4,393,646; Clayton U.S. Pat. No. 4,757,676; Waters U.S. Pat. No. 5,809,761; Irmen U.S. Pat. No. 4,566,260; and Horak, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,182,900. Cottenceau, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,289,673 discloses an unraveling or untwisting device.
As aforesaid, the prior art twisters have difficulties when twisting tightly twisted and heat set yarns. Since a noninsubstantial amount of yarn is of this type, the desirability of providing a pneumatic yarn twister which splices yarn of this type in addition to the various other yarns in the textile industry is desirable.